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May-June 1999

Mike Nichols interview, Robert Bresson symposium, Tehran Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Doug Liman’s Go, Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine, David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ

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GO
By Mark Olsen
A grand swell of orchestral music rises up over the Columbia Pictures logo, just as it has in countless films, the ritualistic opening of movies as we know it. The gentle pastes and genteel sounds of corporate branding are suddenly slashed from the screen, crossfaded away in a strobing flash of color and light as a descending bass-line drops the viewer into the action, like a needle into the groove of a record.

MIKE NICHOLS
Interview by Gavin Smith, profile by Richard T. Jameson

SHAKESPEARE & CO
By Richard Combs

ROBERT BRESSON SYMPOSIUM

Introduction
By Kent Jones

LES DAMES DU BOIS DU BOULOGNE
By John Powers

DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST
By Frederic Bonnaud

A MAN ESCAPED
By Peter Hogue

PICKPOCKET
By Raymond Durgnat

THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC
By Robert Horton

MOUCHETTE
By Phillip Lopate

AU HASARD, BALTHAZAR
By Molly Haskell

NEW BRITISH CINEMA
By Phillip Kemp
Phillip Kemp looks over recent British Cinema.

TEHRAN FILM FESTIVAL
By Richard Peña

BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL
By Harlan Kennedy

MON ONCLE ANTOINE
By Donald Chase
Mon Oncle Antoine, Claude Jutra’s extraordinary evocation of life in rural post-WWII Québec, is widely regarded as the best Canadian film ever made. But in the U.S. it has always been an orphan; not even its acknowledged beauty has saved it from neglect.

LIFE THE MOVIE
By Kent Williams

QUICKIES
David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, by Phillip Lopate, Mike Newell’s Pushing Tin by Kent Jones, Franco Zeffirelli’s Tea with Mussolini by Andrew Lewis Conn, Mark Pellington’s Arlington Road by Michael Atkinson, Clint Eastwood’s True Crime by Dave Kehr.

VIDI VIDI VIDI
The latest new releases on video by Gavin Smith. Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop, Yoshiyuki Kuroda’s Lone Wolf & Cub X 6, and more.